'Feelings are back' at NASA

A refreshingly warm-and-fuzzy side to NASA was revealed this afternoon at an "all-hands" briefing with Charles Bolden and Lori Garver, who were confirmed by Congress last week as NASA's new administrator and deputy administrator.

"Feelings are not something that were popular in the last few years at NASA, but they're back. Feelings are back!" Garver said.

It's a sharp departure from the stoic and blunt former administrator Mike Griffin, who once said, "I don't do feelings – just think of me as Spock."

Bolden, on the other hand, is a self-described hugger and crier, and did both during his speech to the NASA community.

He choked up when describing a meeting with the Apollo 11 astronauts at the White House yesterday. "I want to be as cool as the president, and as eloquent as Neil Armstrong," he said. "And I cry when I talk about him. That's another thing you'll learn about me, I cry. I think it's important to be passionate about something, and I'm passionate about this."

Bolden emphasised the importance of fun and community at NASA. "You need to have fun. If you're not having fun, then something's wrong," he said. In a statement that seemed somewhat threatening, he told NASA employees to go elsewhere if they weren't excited to come to work every day. "Life is too short for you not to get some satisfaction out of doing what you're doing," he said.

He expressed a desire to make NASA headquarters in Washington, DC, a more social place, suggesting that employees there gather on the green expanse of the National Mall for cookouts.

"The various NASA centres are pretty fortunate in that they have usually a focal point on the campus where they can go. We have the Mall," he said. When the audience laughed, he said, "I'm serious! We need to figure out how to come together more as a family. Your kids need to have an opportunity to eat a hot dog together, and meet some of the other fantastic people here at headquarters."

He also warned the audience that he was likely to hug them. "I'm a hugger," he said. "My wife always says, 'But you don't know her!' But I hug. It's a sign of peace." Then he hugged Lori Garver, who said "I'm a hugger too!"

Garver also shared some encouraging poll results about the public's opinion of NASA. Of those polled, 72 per cent have a positive impression of NASA. That's greater than Apple, which got only a 63 per cent rating.

"We are more popular than your iPod," Garver said.

In his closing remarks, Bolden touched on the Augustine Committee, which is in the process of reviewing NASA's manned spaceflight programme, and discussed sending humans to Mars as NASA's next big goal.

"Is there anybody here who does not want to go to Mars?" he asked. No one raised their hands. "We all agree that we want to go there. What we don't agree on is how we get there."

"We can't get there the way we're doing it right now, with a whole bunch of different people thinking we'll do a little of that and a little of this," he said. "You need to come together with a coherent plan, and then you press."

I read on internet land that NASA decided to do a manned mission to Mars by August, 1982, but that Viet Nam war was too costly. That mission could have been a drop in the fiscal bucket, compared to the military spending in those days. Comparing the value of a manned mission to Mars to that of slugging it out in Southeast Asia, I vote Mars, completely. We lost Viet Nam; what a waste. We lost our earlier mission to Mars; what a waste. Now, we now have financial woes and budget cuts. Once more, Mars takes the back seat simply to fall out of the vehicle. What can we do in order to avoid strike three?